Monday, November 05, 2007

Bloody Sunday

Sunday newspaper sales have fallen to a 32-year low of about 51.3 million, according to projections based on the latest report from the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

The decline could become increasingly troublesome for publishers – who already have enough problems – because Sunday traditionally accounts for about half the total ad sales for the typical newspaper.

Circulation dropped an average of 3.5% on Sunday and 2.5% daily in the ABC statistics for the six-month period ended in September, according to a statistical summary complied today by Editor and Publisher Magazine, the industry trade journal.

Applying the circulation decline at the 600-plus papers covered by today’s ABC report to the total universe of more than 1,400 daily newspapers published in the United States, it appears that total Sunday circulation of 51.3 million this year will roughly equal daily circulation for the first time since Sunday newspapers began outselling the daily product in 1990.

The slide in Sunday sales to the lowest point since 1975 will reverse a 17-year period during which publishers sold significantly more papers on Sunday than they did during the week, according statistics maintained by the Newspaper Association of America.

Sunday sales hit a record of 62.56 million copies in 1993, as illustrated in the graph below. While Sunday outpaced daily circulation though the 1990s and into the first part of this decade, Sunday sales began to decline in 2003. Between 2002 and today, Sunday circulation fell by 7.18 million copies, while daily circ dropped 4.12 million copies – a difference of 72%.

An ongoing decline in Sunday readership, if unabated, could have a disproportionately greater impact on the already weakened economics of newspapers than a corresponding reduction in daily sales. That’s because Sunday sales historically have generated half of the advertising revenues at most newspapers.

In the simplest analysis, it is easy to see how revenues would decline if a newspaper selling X number of advertising inserts for $Y per thousand had Z thousand fewer papers to stuff. Fortunately for publishers, the correlation between Sunday circ and ad revenues is not so direct and – at this writing, anyway – not so dire.

It is likely that a significant portion of Sunday circulation was eliminated deliberately by publishers eager to do away with the high cost of hauling newspapers great distances to poorly penetrated locations. For reasons discussed previously here, here and here, the Denver newspapers shed 12.5% of their Sunday circulation in the last six months and the Atlanta Constitution trimmed 9.2% of its Sunday run. Advertisers never saw much value in distant circulation, so won’t be particularly ruffled by its loss.

Newspapers also are protected for the time being by the fact that they have convinced most advertisers that the Sunday paper is the most valuable edition of the week, because readers spend twice as much time reading the Sunday paper as the daily editions. If advertisers continue buying this story, newspapers have a shot at dancing around a certain decline in Sunday circulation.

But the dancing publishers are vulnerable to the question of how much time people actually spend with a newspaper, Sunday or otherwise.

A survey commissioned by the NAA reported, in typically elliptical fashion, that 45% of its respondents spent an average of 60 minutes per issue reading the Sunday paper vs. 30 minutes with the daily paper. But an independent survey by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press found that national newspaper readership averaged only 15 minutes per issue in 2006 – a decline, incidentally, of four minutes (or 21%) since 1994.

Given the enormous difference between the two findings, it is only matter of time before advertisers begin wondering which study is right. When the time comes, the dancing publishers had better be ready to face the music.

all the smart people that run the papers would rather lay off the folksthat make the paper better,for a quick fix,instead of printing the paperthat people will buy.another thingwhen they stopped letting the youngboy or girl that had home deliveron there block and now you have to have a car to deliver, people stopped taking the paper.I used to take thefreep and the Detnews now dont get eather.

So ... we're saying newspapers have list 11 million in Sunday circulation, or 18 percent since the peak.

Can someone find some context with other traditional media? How much has network viewership dropped from, say, 1985, on say, a Thursday night? How much has viewership dropped at network newscasts?

In addition, how many MORE readers are newspapers getting now on their websites.

It may be more than an acorn falling on our heads, but the sky ain't falling. We do not help the situation by panicking. We should be damn proud of our product and ought to be telling the story of how we've retained a large majority of our most loyal customers despite tremendous technological disruptions.

So ... we're saying newspapers have lost 11 million in Sunday circulation, or 18 percent since the peak.

Can someone find some context with other traditional media? How much has network viewership dropped from, say, 1985, on say, a Thursday night? How much has viewership dropped at network newscasts?

In addition, how many MORE readers are newspapers getting now on their websites.

It may be more than an acorn falling on our heads, but the sky ain't falling. We do not help the situation by panicking. We should be damn proud of our product and ought to be telling the story of how we've retained a large majority of our most loyal customers despite tremendous technological disruptions.

"We should be damn proud of our product..." I'm sure you put out a decent paper, but that's no excuse for keeping your head in the sand. Struggle in other traditional media doesn't make print's situation any better; if all traditional media is in trouble, that shouldn't be any consolation. Still looking for a newspaper that has had financial success with the online side (e.g. web access replaces lost print profit dollar for dollar)

The New York Daily News is notorious for laying off smart, hard-working, dedicated management and replaces them with younger, know-nothing-about-the-newspaper business types who do nothing all day, they don't even answer their phones!

Money is not being spent where it should be, and the "quick-fix" attitude is killing the Daily News.

It used to be a company where loyal employees were treated with respect, not shown the door just because the owner doesn't want to take a real, hard look at the product and at the smart people. It's a political thing--with the old-boy network at work. Out with the good guys--in with the asleep at the wheel team who should not be in charge of marketing, circulation or anything at the newspaper!

This is the wake up call that publishers needed to stop the knee-jerk rate hiking that they force on retailers year after year for several generations. The new generation is smarter and not going to put up with it anymore. As a former print buyer for a major national retailer, I can safely say that print will never go away because a sizeble demographic group still rely on the newspaper to get current events, but more so for local news in their community. Newspapers need to scale down their projections and expectations going forward. It's already been established as a reality that circulation has declined (and will continue to decline) into the double digits zone for the last three years. Don't cry and blame technology, work with it and adjust/manage your expectations accordingly.

I always tell my kids this when they cry about how unfair something is: "Learn to adapt to the world; don't expect the world to adapt to you."

Newspapers will continue rolling down the slippery slope into the dustbin of history. Most newspapers will not change their bias because most newspapers are vanity publications! They are just toys for billionaire publishers to play with, to manipulate the public. Go see Citizen Kane. When Kane boasts he doesn't mind losing millions of dollars a year even if he goes out of business in . . . sixty years, think of Pinch Schulzberg.

About Me

Alan D. Mutter is perhaps the only CEO in Silicon Valley who knows how to set type one letter at a time.
Mutter began his career as a newspaper columnist and editor at the Chicago Daily News and later rose to City Editor of the Chicago Sun-Times. In 1984, he became No. 2 editor of the San Francisco Chronicle.
He left the newspaper business in 1988 to join InterMedia Partners, a start-up that became one of the largest cable-TV companies in the U.S.
Mutter was the COO of InterMedia when he moved to Silicon Valley in 1996 to join the first of the three start-up companies he led as CEO.
The companies he headed were a pioneering Internet service provider and two enterprise-software companies.
Mutter now is a consultant specializing in corporate initiatives and new media ventures involving journalism and technology. He ordinarily does not write about clients or subjects that will affect their interests. In the rare event he does, this will be fully disclosed.
Mutter also is on the adjunct faculty of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley.